Grian Chatten, lead vocalist of Irish outfit Fontaines D.C., has announced his debut solo album, Chaos For The Fly. The album will arrive on Friday, 30th June, and it was produced alongside Chatten’s longtime Fontaines collaborator Dan Carey (Kae Tempest, Wet Leg).
Chatten has dropped the first single from the record, titled ‘Fairlies’, which was written across Spain and LA, just a few days before the start of a Fontaines D.C. tour. “It was a quick write,” says Chatten. “And I believe I celebrated each line with a beer.”
Grian Chatten: ‘Fairlies’
Speaking on the decision to release a solo album – and don’t worry, he isn’t leaving the band – Chatten said the idea came to him while walking along a beach north of Dublin.
“I was walking along Stoney Beach at night and it came to me on the waves,” recalls Chatten. “I just stood there and looked at them and I heard the whole fucking thing. Every part of it, from the chord progressions to the string arrangements.”
Chatten continues, “I just thought: I want to do this myself. I know where we as a band are going next and that’s not where I want to go with this. I’ve got a couple of exaggerated aspects of my soul that I wanted to express.”
The rest of the band, he says, are all creatives and songwriters in their own right, and Chatten didn’t want to dominate the band with his own vision that could instead be channelled into a solo project.
“A lot of the album was written with just me and a guitar and I really like the idea of it being boiled down to those elements,” Chatten says. “That feeling of having the song in the palm of your hand, that control of having it with just you and a guitar. There’s an intensity as a result of that.”
Recently, Fontaines D.C. released a cover of Nick Drake’s ‘Cello Song’, as part of an upcoming covers album titled The Endless Coloured Ways: The Songs of Nick Drake.
Further Reading
Listen to Fontaines D.C. Cover Nick Drake’s ‘Cello Song’ from Upcoming Tribute Album
